[X4U] Where to put a 3rd hard drive?

[Neil]

on 6/1/05 4:01 PM, Randy B.Singer wrote:

> Crandon David said:
> 
>> I have a DP500 Gigabit Ethernet G4.
>> 
>> I already have two hard drives attached to the same bus.
>> 
>> I'd like to add a 3rd, and from what I understand it would be connected
>> to the same bus as the DVD-ROM drive. Is this correct?
>> 
>> Does the DVD-ROM drive already have a cable that will connect two
>> drives (like the main hard drive cable) or do I have to get a new
>> cable? And do I have to do the master-slave thing (this computer does
>> not support cable select)?
> 
> 
> If you have two drives on the mail IDE bus in your Mac, then the only
> other IDE bus left is the one for the DVD-ROM.  I don't know how fast
> that bus is in your particular Mac, but typically it is slower than the
> bus your hard drive is on, and it doesn't support 48-bit LBA, so you
> can't use all of a hard drive that is larger than 128GB attached to it..
> 
> It would be a much better idea to attach a third hard drive to an IDE PCI
> card (assuming that you have a free PCI slot.)
> 
> SIIG has a Mac compatible ATA/133 card available for $68.11 with free
> shipping from Buy.com:
> <http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10325653&loc=>
> (This is the best deal on a Mac-compatible UATA/133 card that I've seen.)
> This card supports 48-bit logical block addressing, so you can use a
> drive larger than 128GB.
> 
> And, yes, if your Mac doesn't support cable-select, you have to set one
> disk as the master and the other as the slave.  The drives that you
> purchase will more than likely have either instructions that come with
> them to tell you how to set the jumpers, or the instructions will be
> right on the drive, or both.
> 
> Be sure to get a high-speed 80-conductor (40-pin) IDE cable (i.e. *not* a
> 40-conductor cable) if the drive or the IDE card doesn't come with one.

Is there any reason why everybody is recommending a parallel IDE card
instead of an SATA card?  That would mean skinnier cables, 4-bit LBA, and no
master/slave worries, right?